Nxter News – June 2018 (II): Those Who Are Crazy Enough To Think They Can Change the World Usually Do

June (II)

Welcome, dear Nxters and other followers!

People tend to like the familiarity of routines and changing the world is often lumped in with “delusions of grandeur.” It was crazy for bicycle shop owners to think that man could fly and yet the Wright brothers built the first plane. It was crazy to think we could slip the bounds of our planet and go into the stars and yet we landed on the Moon! Maybe only crazy people change the world. If being crazy gets us things like flight and space travel, then why would you want to be normal? Not everyone can invent something new, but everyone can see ways to improve the world and everyone should be brave enough to act on those “crazy” ideas.

Last week in the realm of crazy ideas we have our favorite purveyor of distributed sequentially hashed file technology, Jelurida, promoting their products across the globe – with an emphasis this week on being in Silicon Valley. Nxter is going to change soon (DEAL WITH IT!) and we are teasing a new app ecosystem, the Ardor Bootcamp Udemy course is still a thing, the Triffic ICO is about to begin and is being well-reviewed, CoinDesk offhandedly insulted the Ardor community, and much more.

Thank you for being with us as we take you on a journey through the busy week that was. Just imagine what is next – it would be crazy of you to do so!

Last week in Lugano, Switzerland – there was the ICO Race, in part sponsored by Jelurida. Vivien from EZYcount (seen in the above picture next to our friend Travin Keith (Agavon) on the right) blogged about his experience:

As the crypto world is a bit crazy, the competition named ICO Race takes place in the big hall where 20 teams with each more ambitious projects than the other fighting with PowerPoints and shock statements. There’s nothing wrong; the team that finishes first receives 600’000 euros (partly cash, partly services)!

The whole day is going at incredible speed. Between meetings and encounters no time to sleep.

Travin is smiling and full of energy. He participates in a panel discussion in the afternoon. I look forward to hearing it. We take advantage of this appointment so that he introduces me to the team of Jelurida. Jelurida is the company behind Ardor, the blockchain technology we use. They just moved the head office to Lugano. During this day, I learn that it is not the only crypto company that recently moved to Lugano. It seems to me that the blockchain companies in Switzerland are mostly in Zug and Geneva and newly Lugano!

The day ends, the Pigzbe project wins the first prize. Bravo Pigzbe! I get back on a train and think back of this exciting day: many business cards in my pockets, tomorrow the thank you emails will be sent.

What is the Ardor Blockchain-as-a-Service Model?

There exists some confusion about how Ardor is a good BaaS solution. Lior directly answered this in the video below.

Veronica wrote:

How does the Ardor Blockchain-as-a-Service offering work? Blockchain-as-a-Service is only as good as the Blockchain application it is built upon, and in this video, Lior speaks to the differences between other Blockchain-as-a-Service offerings, and the Ardor platform, and why it has natural advantages.

SIGBRO Wallet | NXTER.ORG

At Nxter we are preparing to roll out some changes.

A new brand design has been worked on for months, as well as some new services.

Nxter will launch with a new logo, a rebranded and more structured website; to help you engage better with our massive selection of way too hidden content concerning all aspects of the Nxt and Ardor ecosystems. The new design will be rolled out in our email newsletter, social media channels, the website, the tools, and services gradually, in all languages.

With the “relaunch” of Nxter Magazine, we will also present you with some new tools and services. SIGBRO Wallet is one of them. In March we mentioned our upcoming mobile app, and our AEUR WooCommerce plugin. What we are aching to present to you is a software bundle, a gateway to the Nxt blockchain and the Ardor child chain features, which will be easy for anyone to set up and use on their own websites, and in their daily life, without any coding knowledge.

Ardor Bootcamp Update

Remember the Nxter review of the Ardor Bootcamp course? There is a bonus code inside that article for you if you want to attend; efunkem (the creator) has great plans for updating the Udemy content. We encourage everyone to take this online class if you desire to learn more about the Ardor platform and its robust functionality, remember it is online so you can go at your own pace!

efunkem wrote:

An update on the Ardor Bootcamp class on Udemy:

– I’m working on improving some of the videos. I pushed it out pretty fast and want to add more details and just improve it overall. Anticipate summer 2018 for a refresh.
– going to add videos based on the medium articles that @riker publishes
– so far have had about 40 signups, about 15 from ppl on here who already know about it, but about 25 who found it through Udemy and are getting exposed to Ardor for the first time!
– overall feedback has been positive. I’ve only had one review with less than 4 stars.
– going to build a series of other classes about the Jelurida stack: other child chains as well as other projects that are copying the NXT code like Apollo. I can advertise these on the other currencies Slack/Telegram to drive traffic to my classes, which will all reference the wonders of Jelurida and Ardor, hopefully increasing interest and exposure
– going to launch advertising for the class, starting with Twitter
– considering launching an affiliate program. Give people 100 unique coupon codes, I’ll send you 20% of profit for anyone you can get to sign up for the class (happy to convert USD to NXT or Ardor and send to you). Let me know if interested in this
– considering launching an Ardor Bootcamp Advertising Asset. Money raised from sales of the asset will be used to purchase ads. Profits split evenly between the asset via the dividend feature. Will also generate voting (restricted to those who own the asset) so that the group decides what kind of ads we want to run.
– overall, lots of cool stuff on the horizon for my Udemy classes and will focus on spreading the word about Ardor! I found that charging people for the info actually makes them more likely to use it, as opposed to free info that they ignore. Always open to suggestions or ideas!
Link to Ardor Bootcamp: https://www.udemy.com/ardor-bootcamp/

New Telegram Group called Ignis – CommunityFirst

We love our community because they are always working on a varied assortment of interesting projects that will benefit others. This week we call attention to a new Ignis focused Telegram group created by the community (apologies CryptoSolar), for the community!

CEBIT Festival 2018 in Hannover, on June 11th -15th

This week in Germany the CEBIT Festival continues on.

Veronica wrote:

Of all the startup platforms in Europe at the moment, none are as fast-growing or international in scope as SCALE11 at CEBIT, and Jelurida is pleased to announce that we will be on stage & have a booth within the Blockchain zone of the conference. This is exciting exposure, and we are proud to represent Ardor, Nxt, and Ignis at this event!

Lightweight contracts can now invoke each other, think library development and code reuse on the blockchain. New contract manager tool simplifies contract deployment. Join me at the silicon valley next week https://t.co/FFraJ2NZwl for an in depth tech discussion and a demo.

Learn How to Write a Smart Contract – Barcelona, June 21th

“Bring your own computer, we’ll guide you through a blockchain use case so that you can see the functionality of smart contracts.” This Spanish-language Meetup will take place in Barcelona later this month and will be an opportunity to learn about writing conditional contracts.

BUSINESSES ON ARDOR

Dominium

Veronica, of Jelurida, told us that a child chain agreement is not signed, yet.

An important clarification here: Dominium is testing and evaluating the Ardor technology, it is NOT BASED YET in the Ardor technology, they are seriously considering it 🙂

Still, Dominium is advertising themselves as an Ignis asset and a property platform built on the Ardor blockchain. As seen in the above tweet, Dominium has seen a large interest in their airdrop and asset. Also – as is often the case – the huge interest revealed bugs, all of which they have crunched: email and SMS verification links did not work at all times – fixed, and 2FA with Google Authenticator has been added as an option, “whois” details for their website are now public, the site’s SSL certificate has been upgraded, and a translation module is in place.

Dominium also acknowledged that they will add different levels to their AML/KYC registration process. The details are below:

Another often heard complaint is the level of AML / KYC we are demanding. This is of course because we started from the position that everyone will be a potential investor for assets (securities). As we are also putting an international property portal on the platform, this will not always be the case, so next week we are separating the clearance levels into three levels as follows:

Clearance level 1

Requires the completion of your contact details and an upload of an image of you holding your ID next to your face for identification purposes (the image and ID need to be clear and legible)

This level allows you to purchase and trade utility tokens (DOM), list properties and rent (share) and buy properties

Clearance level 2

Requires the upload of a proof of address and proof of tax number

This level allows you to purchase and trade all assets (securities), although some jurisdictional restrictions may apply

Clearance level 3

Requires the completion of a number of questions and a declaration that you are a qualified investor

This level allows you to invest in all assets without restrictions

Once all this has been build, we will start working on the whitelisting for the Dominium ICO (and if you are fast the PRE-ICO) and shopping cart, as we will be dealing with the full functionality of the ICO ourselves. This is after all the best way to stress test the platform for future asset listings and their ICO’s.

This week and next we are doing more marketing and we look forward to welcoming many more users to our community.

Triffic ICO

By the time you read this, the updated Triffic whitepaper should be released. The Triffic ICO was well-reviewed and should be high on many people’s priority list for participation come July, when it officially begins.

Huge News – We have decided to distribute 50% of our monthly advertising profits to our users as a direct revenue share.

The updated white paper will be out on Monday, but please join our Telegram if you have any questions.https://t.co/6yCndcP6WI

GPS TOKEN PRESALE BEGINS JULY 2, 2018 AT 09:00PST

Apart from the ICO, nobody ‘buys tokens’. They are given to people who use the app in many different ways. Travelling about, creating vouchers, buying and selling in the marketplace, using personal services and much more. Unlike most tokens that are sold in an ICO, GPS Tokens actually have a use – they power the whole app ecosystem. Something that very much requires blockchain technology – and Ardor already provides much of the functionality we need.

At EZYcount, we envisage accounting for the self-employed and small business owners as being automated and decentralised so they can focus on what matters instead of managing accounts.

Accounting can and should be completed automatically. Connection to payment systems, e-commerce websites and invoicing systems enable our AI to complete tasks automatically that would manually take hours to do. Bookings are created automatically and fully completed financial statements are available within a couple of clicks, and following analysis of your data, EZYcount AI can provide you with tips to improve your financial stability.

We support strong data ownership laws that protect individuals and ensure they have ownership of their data. Decentralisation ensures you will have full ownership of your data and can decide how it should be used.

In order to give an incentive to participate at our Pre-ICO, we decided to take an unconventional approach. Instead of just granting the Pre-ICO participants a discount we will give out a completely different Token during the Pre-ICO.

The Token available during the Pre-ICO is the Token-as-a-Licence (TaaL) which represents a lifelong and tradable license for our AI automated blockchain accounting solutions. The function of the Token available during the main ICO will have a different functionality which will be shared with our Community later on.

Their whitepaper is soon to be released – you can sign up to receive it here.

CLONES

Metrodex

Metro, the Nxt clone and hybrid DEX we have been writing about over the last couple of weeks, has released their source code and a reward program to incentivize devs to take a look at it, and go for a bug-hunt.

We also have a reward program for finding bugs in our code. You’ll get 1,000, 5,000 or 15,000 MTR for each bug depending on its severity.

Bounty hunters – check the code and enter their discussion in this BCT thread.

NXT Snapshot block: 1894000 (approximately on June 22nd).

100,000,000 MTR coins or 10% of the max circulation supply will be distributed to the holders of NXT. For each 10 NXT on your (own) wallet at the moment of the snapshot, you will get 1MTR.

Also, 100,000,000 MTR coins go to the Metro development team.

Airdrop coins will be locked on the blockchain start. Every mined block will unlock 1/200,000 of locked balances. Thus, about 1000 initial distributed MTR will be unlocked every mined block. The whole initial distributed stake will be unlocked when miners receive 400,000,000 MTR.

Apollo (APL) Airdrop – DONE!

Apollo claims to be the first cryptocurrency with all the features of blockchain in one place.

Nowhere in their whitepaper is Nxt mentioned, however as a veteran Nxter, or just slightly familiar with the Nxt Reference Software wallet and features, reading through Apollo’s materials is like one big deja vu. The Apollo team has honored the JPL and distributed 10% of their coins to NXT holders.

The plan is to add further privacy features and – eventually – replace the Nxt protocol.

Having utilized NXT technology as our base, we are developing Hermes to be it’s replacement. Hermes will allow the Apollo blockchain to grow faster and healthier the larger the Apollo user base grows, rather than slower as with most cryptocurrencies on the market. Where as our current speed may be 20 to 30 seconds on average (transaction times will differ) Hermes will allow for transaction speeds of 2-3 seconds. Our goal in integrating Hermes is to become the safest, fastest and most private cryptocurrency on the market.

You can see your airdropped APL coins by logging into https://apollowallet.org with your Nxt account address. We recommend you NOT to login to any online node by using your passphrase, as this is the same passphrase that gives access to all your NXT, your other airdropped coins + probably also your holdings on the Ardor blockchain platform.

In order to move airdropped coins into a new account, we recommend you to create a new account address, set up a transaction of all your clone coins to this new account using the online clone client – but instead of signing online with your passphrase click “Advanced” > “Do Not Sign” > “Do Not Broadcast”.

Now copy the unsigned Transaction Bytes, and transfer them into the NxtBridge OFFLINE tool. Sign with your passphrase (private key), and copy the signed transaction bytes back into the online clone client. Broadcast the signed transaction bytes (cogwheel > Transaction Operations > Broadcast Transaction). You have now moved your clone coins to a brand new account without exposing your passphrase to the clone server, or anyone on the internet even.

Should we make a “How-To” video?

Nxt community member and developer, SwissAlps, announced an APL exchange in nxtforum:

Volp Coin Update

Last week we mentioned VOLP coin for the first time, as the team issued a placeholder asset on the Ignis chain, which will be their crowdsale token before they launch their new protocol – a hybrid between a Nxt clone and their Volp AI protocol. There is no date for the ICO or the airdrop to NXT holders yet, but the Volp team decided to enlighten us with some more details last week about their project.

They wrote:

Recently, a user asked questions that encouraged us in advance to write more about the Volp Protocol, we believe that this information is important for everyone.

With the Volpcoin beta, we obtained through parallel simulator results up to 2 million transactions per compacted block with dimensions of approximately 5 kB. These data refer to the tests applied in Volpcoin beta through a pilot implementation of the Volp protocol.

We use a hybrid VM kernel that we built from scratch to run in symbiosis with the Volp protocol along with a compiler of our own, specific to this application. Soon we will make available all the technical data on the website and the behavior collected by us during the period that volpcoin beta was active.

Note: The size of the results obtained in the compression of the Volp protocol may seem empirical, but it’s one of the most important things that we could project in the period of 2002-2006. We are at this very moment, performing load stress on the protocol, so we can identify underlying anomalies.

Lightweight Contract Updates

Lior announced that continued Lightweight Contract development is ongoing and rapidly progressing. Also, the potential news of a Lightweight Contract that rewards Nxt forging with IGNIS is very intriguing.

#Ardor Lightweight Contracts development is progressing rapidly. We can now invoke APIs not only locally but on a remote #Ardor node or even remote $NXT node from an #Ardor contract. Using this function, we are testing a contract which automatically awards #Ignis to $NXT forgers! pic.twitter.com/EVv92HYUPZ

Lightweight contracts can now invoke each other, think library development and code reuse on the blockchain. New contract manager tool simplifies contract deployment. Join me at the silicon valley next week https://t.co/FFraJ2NZwl for an in depth tech discussion and a demo.

Ardor Lite Update

Another update to the 3rd party Ardor Lite mobile wallet app:

mrv777 wrote:

About to push version 0.8.18 of Ardor Lite to the Google Play store:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mrv.ardor.lite
• Open orders added to coin exchange
• Cancel order ability added to any open orders
• Updated Italian, Spanish, French, Russian, German, and Dutch translations updated
• Highlight active page in navigation
I would appreciate anyone that speaks another language to check the translations in the app, as I can’t verify they are correct myself :cara_ligeramente_sonriente:
Translations are always appreciated here: https://osyf9yf.oneskyapp.com/collaboration/project/306639

When Binance?

Earlier this year the ANG helped raise over $100K to list ARDR on Binance. Months of silence have infuriated many. Elizabeth, the director of the ANG, released this statement about the ongoing (and slow) progress of the application to list ARDR.

Elizabeth wrote:

To reiterate some facts to follow this tedious conversation. The funds have been collected, the application has been made to Binance, and NDA has been signed. I have confidence any difference in the value of the collected funds will be made up. We can only wait patiently and let Jelurida work this on our behalf under NDA.

Bithumb

Nxters can vote to get NXT and ARDR listed on this upcoming Chinese exchange.

Tokok wrote:

TOKOK.COM will launch its trading system in June 2018. Now we have to decide on the first listing coins. In line with the goal of building a consensus community, it is our duty to serve the users and make them satisfied, we decided to launch the first listing coins vote activity.

IN THE MEDIA

Lior Yaffe at Medium – Stateful vs. Stateless Blockchain Contracts, Or what is wrong with Ethereum Contracts and how the new Ardor Lightweight Contracts can fix this

In Lior’s latest Medium post he explains the pitiful state (pun intended) of smart contracts. Technical in the extreme, but extremely informative.

Lior wrote:

Ethereum Contracts are Stateful

….

To summarize, relying on the contract to save its state is a bad idea, it opens up many attack vectors and manipulation options and also causes constant risk of locking funds in a contract because of difficult to find bugs.

Ardor Lightweight Contracts to the rescue

…

Since lightweight contracts are executed by a single node not by all nodes, there is no risk of flooding the blockchain with duplicate messaging transactions. As you can see the contract is invoked, does some processing, submits some transactions and quits. The next invocation of the contract does not rely on any data saved into the contract itself so can run in parallel.

We believe that the stateless approach to contract execution used by Ardor will prove safer and more scalable compared to other stateful approaches.

CoinDesk Mentions (Insults) Ardor

Wow…just wow. CoinDesk is probably the preeminent name in the blockchain space and to be humiliated by them is – initially – an affront. The gist of this article is supposed to be the toxicity of cryptocurrency fanbases on Twitter – a valid point. But the explicit accusations of our Nxter community as being the champion of a toxic, social media “bias train” is a step too far. To demonize an entire community based on a tweet is a very poor metric to casually dismiss the legitimate desires of many. Do not be the troll, Mr. Casey – if people ask you to pay attention to a PoS blockchain 3.0 project that has spent more effort in developing a quality product since 2013 than it has on the marketing / hype-train then perhaps it is worth doing so. Far be it from us to tell you what to do and what to dismiss but your “casual” dismissal of an entire ecosystem based on such petty and petulant things as some tweets is frankly insulting and unprofessional. Kindly, don’t mix your emotions up with lack of research, or, in the worst case, it could be read as a bad attempt at spinning.

Here’s the infamous comment:

Am curious @mikejcaseyWhy are you ignoring Ardor? Is it something personal? Do you only cover hyped and in pdf stage projects? Do you have any idea what Ardor is at all?https://t.co/XcHrvwyid3

OK, Ardor fans. You have your wish. Your favorite token is getting a mention on CoinDesk.

Not, perhaps, for the reasons you want. But they do say all publicity is good publicity. So, there you have it. The response to my column last week on layer-two solutions was mostly positive with the usual dose of critics, but it was the Ardor tribe who caught my attention when one reader’s tweet, complaining that I hadn’t mentioned the blockchain platform, prompted others to pile on with accusations of my bias and ignorance.

@mikejcasey as you admit "Ardor's framework for enabling "child chains" makes an interesting contribution to the evolution of crypto technology." in fact #ardor is the only multi-chain solution in production today, why didn't @coindesk ever mention it when writing about scaling?

The Wiremaster – Buy and Sell a Property on Blockchain

Will buying and selling property on the blockchain be the “killer app” that makes blockchain a “must have” piece of technology? This article insists that a future of listing real estate on a blockchain and using tethered tokens like AEUR, and stateless Lightweight Contracts, our suggestion, can propel the homebuying experience onto the blockchain. Read an Ardor use case.

The Wiremaster wrote:

Let’s suppose that you found your dream apartment in Germany and after you had a look at it and you’re convinced that it is the one, you decide to go on with the process
…
Imagine that we had a digital identity on the Ardor platform and that there was a land registry right into the Ardor blockchain with each property being represented by a singleton asset.
…
So after you have agreed on the sale price:
– the bank sets up a Phased Transaction (bank, buyer, seller and notary have to approve) in AEUR (Ardor) towards the seller and confirm the mortgage amount.
– the buyer sets up a Phased Transaction (all parties have to approve — as above) in AEUR towards the seller with the deposit agreed
– seller sets up a Phased transaction (all parties have to approve — as above) with the transfer of the singleton asset, representing the property, to the buyer
(…)
In this way all verifications can be done and the final approval would allow the transfer of funds and the property asset. By transferring the singleton asset, the official property registry is automatically updated as it’s in the blockchain itself.

What could come next, is a full trustless property sale where the notary would not be needed. Once all transactions are approved by all parties, they will be executed at the Phased transaction’s predefined deadline. E.g. after the deadline is reached, the money from the buyer and the bank are transferred to the seller and the property ownership is being transferred to the buyer.

101blockchains – Ardor vs Ethereum: What Are the Pros And Cons?

A simple refresher on the business use cases of Ardor – easy to implement and easy to maintain. Our readers know this, but it is nice to see the larger community realizing that Ethereum is not the “prodigal child” of the blockchain space.

Ardor being an evolution of NXT, which was the first [altcoin] ever built from scratch, comes with a lot of improvements made possible by the alteration of the underlying blockchain. For starters, it frees itself from much data to enhance efficiency and speed through the creation of multiple chains.

In contrast, Ethereum just like Bitcoin stores and processes transactions on a single blockchain. For this reason, it currently has a capacity of 121 GB blockchain which means revalidation must take place for all new nodes. This explains its scalability issues.

Security with Ardor blockchain is also on another level thanks to the parent-child chains that separate transactions and data from one another.

Blockchain News – Interview with Lior Yaffe

Last week we mentioned this interview that Lior conducted while in South Korea. Now we can link you to the video where Lior explains what the Ardor platform can do and provides examples of how it can be used. An entertaining 12-minute interview with the always great Lior.

ANd that was all for this week, fellow Nxters. Follow us on Twitter or Telegram for important breaking updates during the week as they happen. Keep on working towards your goals and dare to change the world for the better! We hope to see you back here next week.

Help Nxter.org grow and help us continue to provide focused coverage on the ever-growing blockchain space by rewarding us for our hard efforts. Donation address: NXT-TK9J-MEKH-MUP9-HFCH2 / ARDOR-TK9J-MEKH-MUP9-HFCH2. Thanks.